The Division of the Damned (38 page)

The stunned hush that followed soon broke as Czerolka once again started to cackle his amusement. Von Struck distractedly surveyed their laughing faces and pondere
d on the debatable logic of the l
ibrarian’s symbolism and the potential evil of an ancient manuscript.

Chapter 47

Transylvania

The chase materialised from out of nowhere.

They had been making reasonable progress throughout the first day and had ridden until shortly before nightfall. They were tired and hungry but their mission consumed all other priorities and they decided their discomfort was secondary to the success of the plan, namely escaping to the East.

They decided to walk through the night, leading their mounts on foot to spare them. Their overriding fear spurred them on through the hunger and fatigue, and even the horses seemed to sense the necessity of their undertaking.

The wood was as black as pitch but their eyes had adjusted to the darkness and they found they could make out the trail. Their progress was slow but steady.

Around four in the morning, Mordechai announced that he needed a rest. Reuben studied the watch Rasch had given him when events were looking up after the opening of the first camp, and decided they could all do with a break.

He turned to pull his water bottle from his bag and, out of the corner of his
eye,
he caught a movement silhouetted against the nearly full moon. He turned to look square on and saw, to his horror, the
c
ount’s soldiers heading in their direction.

"Oy vey," he involuntarily muttered. "Quick, get on your horses and follow me!"

Mordechai and Stephanie turned in the direction he was looking and wordlessly sprang to action, exhaustion falling off them like an old coat as panic threatened to take over.

Though the vampires were still a long way off, they vectored in quickly and gained on the horses with alarming speed. Reuben stole a glance to see if he could spot them and gasped in terror when he saw how quickly they were gaining ground. He put his head down to drive his mount on but he knew it was a lost cause. Turning again to look, he was fascinated by the speed of their attack, and saw now they were only a hundred meters away.

Stephanie dug her feet into her horse, wordlessly urging him on, while silently praying for deliverance. The silence of the vampires made the scene all the more surreal and she half-hoped it was all a figment of her imagination.

Mordechai couldn’t keep himself from looking back. The vampires were now almost above them and seemed to be hovering in the treetops. He blindly let his horse run with the others, unable to keep his
eyes off the airborne horde. Though they looked to be hovering, Mordi knew it was an illusion because they were holding a constant distance between themselves and the fugitives.

"Why don’t they attack? What are they doing?” he distantly wondered.

Then, as if rising from beneath a sea of green,
Count
Blestamatul emerged from tree
top level to take the lead. The clouds parted, the moon shone through,
and Mordechai clearly saw the c
ount.

Swollen and hideous, his enlarged head cracked open and he grimaced to show his knife-like teeth. Mordechai put all his trust in his horse and watched, fascinated, as the bulging, powerfully-built vampire pulled forward to the front of his swarm.

Still the vampires did not attack and they seemed content just to follow from above the tr
ee
tops.

"The path is too narrow for them to dive down on us,” Mordi told himself
,
but he didn’t really believe it.

Suddenly, from the tree
line to their right, a shot rang out. For the briefest of moments a solitary figure was thrown in relief by the muzzle flash. It was followed by another and then another until the whole right side of the path they were on was lit up by the steady firing. Mordechai looked back to see the vampires flinching as the bullets hit them from their unseen assailants. He whooped inwardly, not seeing or caring who it was that had come to their aid.

Volley after volley slammed into the swarm as the three of them rode deeper into the wood, and all the time Mordechai kept his eyes on the flying vampires, willing them to flee the barrage. However, although the rounds were clearly hitting them, they didn’t fall or falter in their pursuit.

As if on a given signal, they swooped down on the Russian line. The vampires flew past them, ignoring the fleeing civilians, intent only on their attackers.

The pack hit the tree line like a rain of boulders and the three of them heard the drawing of swords over the screams of the soldiers and the rattle of machine gun fire.

Mordechai chanced another look at the fight but now
that
the vampires were no longer silhouetted by the moon there was nothing to see. Only the noise of the struggle and the flash of cordite carried the battle to him as it raged to his immediate right.

The path was still clear ahead and none of their would-be rescuers had made any move to halt them, busy as they were with the vampires, so they galloped on, impervious to the killing and the darkness surrounding them.

The horses were blowing, and just as Reuben thought about slowing the pace, he heard the dry grate of a sword being drawn behind them. He turned to see, in the frenzied illumination of the fight, the gr
inning
and bloated face of the c
ount as he exploded through the trees after them. Reuben knew that no amount of whipping would incite his mount to sufficient speed to escape him and he inwardly resigned himself to die in that frozen wood.

Mordechai was the closest and Reuben watched
in disbelieving terror as the c
ount reached him and effortlessly pulled him back to bite his neck. It seemed like the
c
ount's face and hands engulfed his whole shoulder as he worried into the wound. Blood flooded down Mordechai’s chest and the gush was so rich it looked
like a black cloak in the half-
light of the battle.

Mordechai himself made no sound. His only appeal was an outstretched hand and a mouth held agape in the agony of death.

Suddenly the
c
ount bellowed at them, "You are mine, Israelites, mine to set free, mine to control and mine to kill." He let Mordechai’s body slump down into the saddle. "I never set you free, so now you will die
!
" he roared into the night.

The
c
ount let Mordechai’s body slide down from the horse and made to spring over to Stephanie who had also watched the scene in rapt horror.

Suddenly the horse under the c
ount jinked up from behind and the tail-end explosively burst outwards. Limbs and flesh splayed out in the blast and it took Reuben only a split second to realise that the beast had been hit by an anti-tank rocket from behind.

The c
ount was thrown against a tree, giving Reuben and Stephanie valuable seconds to get away. He stood up immediately and turned in the direction of the fleeing pair.

Reuben looked behind. The c
ount was two hundred meters away, and if he wanted to, he could have caught up with them. Their eyes locked and in that brief m
oment Reuben realised that the c
ount wasn’t going to give chase.

He could clearly see the c
ount’s face, lit up not by the fires of war but by the inescapable rise of the early morning sun. He faced the horizon and grinned as the soft red strand of dawn kissed the twilight clouds.               

“
We’ve made it!" he shouted over his shoulder.
"The sun, the sun has saved us!”

He stopped his horse and Stephanie’s automatically halted next to him. They turned in unison to see that the vampires were gone.

The soldiers who had shot at them lay sprawled on both sides of the track. They were Russian, not as many as he’d thought, and Reuben guessed they were the vanguard of the main advance.  

"Shall we see if any survived?" Stephanie finally broke her shocked silence.                                              

"No, let’s get out of here. The main force will come soon and I don’t
want to have to answer for this.”

"But w
e can’t just leave them, that’s
—
”

Reuben butted in.
"Listen, a lot of Russians died here tonight and there will be a scapegoat needed for the official report. We will be the scapegoats if we’re caught here. They’ll pin this on a partisan ambush and we’ll be labelled as partisans, and tried and summarily executed as such.”

”You don’t know that, though. How can you be so sure?" She started to move her horse towards the area where the massacre had taken place.

"You stay here, then. I’m going.” He turned his horse to ride away, stoppe
d and said over his shoulder, "A
nd I’ll tell you why I can be so sure. The Russian system is just as unfair and corrupt as the German one. It’s run on fear and distrust, and what starts at the top is magnified as it slides down through the classes. Dictators incite men to do terrible things to save their own skin.”

Then wordlessly he cantered off.

Stephanie surveyed the undergrowth in the fledgling light. Severed limbs, trees splattered with blood, the carnage assaulted her senses and she felt a tremor of insanity flit through her.

From out of the foliage, a vampire crawled out into the path. One arm
had been
hacked off at the
elbow,
both legs
were
blown off at the mid-thigh. He could no longer escape the sun’s merciless eye
. A
s he sl
ithered snakelike on the ground, h
e smouldered.

She lifted her hands to shield herself from the heat as it finally burst into flames in the middle of the path. The hissing of its flesh and the terrified mewling sickened her so that she rammed her fist to her mouth to silence her revulsion. As his eyes popped with the heat, she gave up the struggle and screamed her horror.

The scream lasted a lifetime but was over in a minute, and it left her empty and wretched, mutely staring at the fiery death.

She watched patiently as it burnt to ashes, her initial terror mutating into something far darker; a bitter hope that this was one of the monsters who had killed her boy. She felt neither hatred nor pity, only the hollow sadness of a grieving mother searching for a vague answer for the murder of her child.

When it was gone and the cinders were finally carried off into the wood, she looked around as if waking from a dream. The loneliness chilled her and she realised that Reuben had been right, that to stay here was madne
ss. She could do nothing here
—
there weren’t any survivors.

A bird called harshly and the sudden break in the silence ended her trance. She knew she had to be away from this place and quickly. A gathering panic threatened to engulf her and, with a stifled sob, she
dashed after Reuben to salvage her self-control and focus.

Reuben wasn’t very far away. He’d been dawdling in the hope that Stephanie would come to her senses. No words were spoken when she finally pulled up to his side. They were an age apart but her companionship would, he knew, keep him from dwelling on Mordechai’s death. They’d both gotten very accomplished at denying grief.

The trees opened before them as the path widened and Reuben broke their reverie when he saw a gap in the
tree line
ahead of them.

"I think that’s the end of the forest."

"What then? Shall we have a rest?" she asked absently.

Reuben was about to answer when a loud click cut through the wood. It was echoed by another as a soldier stood out in the middle of the path. Reuben held up his hands and went to slide down from his horse. The soldier approached them, all the while holding a rifle towards him.

Reuben cocked a leg over the pommel of the saddle and moved to unhinge his foot from the stirrup when the Russian pulled him down to the ground. Reuben hit the floor on his back and his eyes glazed over as the wind raced out of him.

Laughing, the Russian put his boot on Reuben’s che
st as he called to his comrades.

"Tell me what you do to Russian spies and I’ll tell you what we do to German spies.”

The wood around them erupted with Red Army uniforms and Stephanie fell from her saddle in a dead faint.

Chapter 48

Transylvania

September

She screamed against the gag with all her strength, pulling at the cords that bound her to the vampire’s sarcophagus. Naked, sweat-drenched in fear, with her legs splayed to help the delivery, Iullia was being attended to by Maria while the
c
ount looked on. Marik held guard at the arch that served as a doorway into the room, barring the vampire entourage that followed the Dracyl wherever he went.